Adobe Shows the Raw, Dark Side of Photoshop CS6

Photoshop CS6 will get a new dark look, but it's not required

Bryan O'Neil Hughes, who is an Adobe senior product manager, published a YouTube video that showcase Photoshop CS6 which will be included in the sixth version of Adobe's Creative Suite coming in the first half of 2012. In this sneak preview you can see some of its new features like the dark workspace and raw-image editing tools that are already visible in Lightroom 4.

Darker photo backgrounds are all the rage for photo software since they make photos stand out nicely; the darker interface used in Lightroom and the consumer-oriented Photoshop Elements is matched by Phase One Capture One, DxO Optics Pro, and others. But Photoshop users can be a conservative bunch, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear some squawking. Fortunately, the interface can be changed to lighter tones for those who are change-averse or who fear their tonal judgements will be skewed by the noir look.

O'Neil Hughes also showed off the new Camera Raw module, used to edit the raw photos that higher-end cameras can take--or for that matter to edit JPEGs or other more ordinary formats. To nobody's surprise, the new Camera Raw module gets the same editing controls as the Lightroom 4 beta, whose raw-processing engine it shares.